Lyrics

It's about a three-hour drive from Austin, Texas to the heart of the Houston Medical Center, home of M D Anderson Cancer center and maybe a dozen more hospitals. Way too many people I know could make this drive in their sleep; they've done it so many times. Dear friends in other parts of the country still book their flights on a regular basis from their homes in Colorado, California, New York and Pennsylvania to Houston, where they'll spend a week or a month or six months enduring test after test, report after report, and night after night in discomfort, sleeplessness and fear, ultimately re-discovering themselves with amazing courage as they work their way from one side of their treatment to the other. I can look back on my life and say that ever since I was a kid I've spent time with friends and family in most of these hospitals. Even my two sisters were born there.
This time, what began as five days in Houston turned into a year-long journey of tears and frustration, prayer and hope, and finally admiration and acceptance, as some people very dear to me underwent their treatment and recovery. ls

I'm packing my bags and heading for Houston.
A couple of days and you'll be good to go.
It's not complicated - a simple procedure
You'll put it behind you and get on with the show

I'm watching your world crumble around you
Day after day until the deal comes down
Alone with your thoughts, thumb on the button
Counting the minutes on that misery go round

CHORUS
Well, fill me up cause I'm on empty
All I want is all I need to get
Just a push up over the mountain
Cause I know the mountain's not done with me yet

Five days in Houston

Speak your mind, don't make it so easy
Turning it over at the speed of sound
I'm not like you, you roll with the punches
I'm feeling your pain as they knock you down

BRIDGE

Sometimes it's not good news
Sometimes there's no silver lining
It's not the way we'd chose
Sometimes

We're all drifting, we just don't know it
Caught in a slipstream we go round and round
You up there, out on a tightrope
Welcome to Houston, it's your battle ground